(This picture from the Getty Museum’s website). It is the main chamber of Cave 85 at the end of a conservation effort. These paintings are very, very old and date back to the late Tang dynasty ( 618–907 A.D.).
There is a roaming display of artwork from the caves of Dunhuang on display at the Seattle Art Museum. The exhibit contains Buddhist artwork and photographs of the caves of Dunhuang, an ancient and strategic location on the Silk Road. (The Silk Road is a network of trade routes that linked the Roman Empire with China for the trade of silk, spices and other commodities such as cotton and jade). A photojournalist called James C.M. Lo, and his wife Lucy, made several arduous journeys to the caves in 1943 during World War II, to systematically photograph the interiors and exteriors of the caves, and to draw attention to their historical significance.
The entrance to the Seattle Art Museum in Volunteer Park. There is a display of artwork and pictures, of the Dunhuang caves inside.The trade routes of the Silk Road. Dunhuang is just above the white patch of Himalayan snow on the map.
One of the SAP S4 training courses I am doing is called ‘How to build an SAP Fiori Application in the Cloud’. So let me explain this course title.
‘SAP Fiori’ is the new ‘Windows 10’ style tile interface that SAP is making available for its entire suite of mission-critical business application software. (For example : a tile can show the number of purchase requisitions that a buyer needs to process. Or the number of emergency admissions into a hospital, in the last 24 hrs).
‘Application’ stands for the specific, targeted functions that will be built into each of the application tiles. For example : the classic SAP screens for processing purchase requisitions are monstrously complicated (multiple screens and tabs, with hundreds of fields!). These new apps will typically simplify those screens ten-fold.
‘In the Cloud’ means that the application code and the data that it presents and processes, will be hosted on a server that will make the applications and data available on any screen : desktops, as well as mobile devices such as iPads and iPhones.
There are lots of standard applications already available in the SAP library, but SAP has published powerful tools to enable their business users to conceive of, and design and build, any new applications that they may need.
Part of my assignment for this course was to conceive of a simple application, and then use the SAP ‘Splash’ application to prototype it. Check out the hand-drawn mock-ups that I imported into the Splash app for a museum curator. Once the mock-ups had been drawn into Splash, a large number of functions became available to add onto the layout, such as navigation functions, buttons, links and icons. In my example, the curator is using the app to find the Mona Lisa. So yes, I know : 1. that it means the curator works at the Louvre in Paris and 2. he will probably (hopefully) not need to use his app to find the Mona Lisa !
I sketched out layouts for four screens of my application that I call ‘The Curator’s Assistant’. The first screen is a listing of exhibits. the next one a listing of all the art in one exhibit that was selected, and then the next two screens show detail pages of the information for works of art.This is a listing of the exhibits. For example, click on ‘Renaissance Paintings’, which will bring up .... a listing of paintings in the Renaissance Paintings collection. Click on ‘The Mona Lisa’, and that will display .... the details of ‘The Mona Lisa’. (I imported a little .jpg picture of the Mona Lisa just to make it look a little more realistic). And then the back arrow will enable the user to go back.
I found this interesting article by the New York Times abouttrade deficits, and specifically the trade deficit that the USA has with the rest of the world. The bottom line : it’s complicated, and not clear at all that cutting the trade deficit is an option, or that cutting it will help American workers. (And the banana? The writer uses trade between the countries Bananaland and Carnation to illustratethe consequences of trading and trade deficits between two countries and the world at large).
I wanted to go check up on the latest construction in Seattle’s South Lake Union district, and went there with the light rail train and South Lake Union street car on Sunday afternoon. Soon after I got there, a persistent downpour started, and I had to curtail my picture-taking and call it quits.
One of the (relatively) new ‘Day One’ Amazon office buildings with a touch of artsy whimsy on the corner.The building in the middle of the picture is an apartment block, with more under construction. Many of the new buildings are apartment blocks, so that people can live and work in South Lake Union (is that a good thing, to live so close to one’s work?. Good and bad, I suppose).The open spaces are nicely done. Hopefully some greenery will appear to chase away the browns and grays, now that spring is here.This is Amazon property, between two office buildings called Day One* North and Day One South, but a plaque says the public is welcome to use it. *Day One, since the technology revolution is in it ‘infancy’.Here is an interactive display in one of the windows, with passers-by given the opportunity to take pictures of their mugs, which are then incorporated into the collages. (So of course I looked into the camera. I’m on the far right with black hair and .. part of an old bathysphere outfit?).
The homepage of Intel paid tribute to Andy Grove with this picture.
Andy Grove, former CEO of the microprocessor manufacturing giant Intel, passed away on Monday March 21. Here is an interesting article from Bloomberg Businessweek titled Silicon Valley’s First Giant, written by Jim Aley.
You can put it in pocket! The Intel Compute Stick is built into a chassis that measures approximately 0.5 x 4 x 1.5 inches, and weighs a mere 1.9 ounces.
P.S. I browsed around on Intel’s website to check out the latest microchip processors, and found an very interesting new form factor for a computer : the computer on a stick. It is hard to believe what was crammed into this package. The stick has vents to keep it cool, and comes complete with a little power button, as well as a USB 2.0 and micro USB port. The USB 2.0 port is for a keyboard and mouse. A micro SD slot allows storage expansion to 128 GB. The stick comes loaded with Windows 10, and plugs into the HDMI port of a flat screen. And there you have it, a working Windows 10 computer. It sounds like science fiction, but it is not !
The two remaining Democratic Party candidates for President of the United States are Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. There was a Bernie Sanders for President rally in Seattle’s baseball stadium tonight. Some 15,000 people attended (a large crowd for a political rally). Sanders was on his home turf. Washington State (or at least the Western part of it) is one of the bluest* in the nation. And so Sanders ran through a litany of progressive issues still needing work in the USA : immigration reform, paid maternity and family leave, equal pay for women, raising the minimum wage, criminal justice reform, environmental issues and pollution, free college education and reduced student loan debt, infrastructure funding .. a long list. The primary elections tomorrow are all about the Democrats, in the States of Washington, Hawaii and Alaska.
*Blue (state) on a political map of the USA means Democratic. Red states are Republican.
Bernie Sanders in full flight mode (fight mode?) at the rally tonight in Seattle. ‘Don’t worry, Trump will not become President’ .. he may be right, but I will still worry.
Here is a quick ‘post card’ I made from a New York Times subscription invitation with striking graphics and colors (‘Spring for the New York Times’, it said). I took the original lettering out and replaced it with a spring proverb that I like very much.
Pictures from the aftermath of the attacks in Brussels, from the on-line edition of the New York Times. From another article in the NYT: A handwritten note on the makeshift memorial next to him said, “In the end, when you see what can be done in the name of God, it makes you wonder what is left for the devil.”
I know very bad things happen every day around the world. Still, it’s a bad start to the day, to learn of another terrorist attack, this time in Brussels. Below is the New York Times link to the locations where the attacks happened.
I went to the dentist early Monday morning, and had some time to walk around the block nearby to check up on the construction of the Amazon biospheres. There is still some way to go, but the frames are in place.
Here is what is on the drawing board (and nearing completion): the three biospheres in a park-like setting, and across the street Amazon’s new headquarters. (The slim building with the yellowish color on the far right).The ‘Hello Kitty’ streetcar at its stop in downtown Seattle this morning. It is getting ready to head toward South Lake Union.The unusual frameworks of the biospheres are up .. I hope working with the unusual shapes is not driving the construction workers crazy!Here is the main entrance to the Amazon headquarters in the block right across from the biospheres.
Despite the drizzly weather, there was a number of people out to take a look at the cherry blossoms in the quad of the University of Washington today.
It is officially spring* here in the northern hemisphere ! .. even though it was a rainy, cloudy day here in Seattle. (The sun did come out early evening afternoon, just before it set at 7.24 pm).
*Spring starts at the vernal equinox, the day the sun ‘crosses’ the celestial equator (the imaginary line in the sky above the earth’s equator), from south to north. The sun does not really cross the equator. The earth spins like a top around a tilting axis, which at this time of year is at a right angle to the sun. So that is why day and night are nearly exactly the same length (12 hours) all over the world at this time of year, and again at the autumnal equinox.
The two new stations that were added to the Light Rail system here in Seattle. [Map from the on-line Oregonian Times].There is a lot of excitement here in Capitol Hill today with two new light rail stations opening : one here in my Capitol Hill neighborhood, and one more at the football stadium of the University of Washington. My friend Bryan and I did a round trip from Capitol Hill Station up to the University of Washington, down to Westlake in downtown Seattle, and back up again to Capitol Hill. I was going to say the project came in 6 months early and $200 million under budget, but I see that comes with a big asterisk. The original schedule and budget that voters had approved in way back in 1996, called for a $1.8 billion light rail line from the airport to the U-district, opening in 2006. Instead, $2.3 billion was spent on a light rail line from the airport to Westlake Station (completed in 2009). This extension cost an additional $1.8 billion. I guess it is this part that came in under budget.
Here is the main entrance at the Capitol Hill station. (Side note: There is actually no capitol building in Seattle. The Washington State capitol is in Olympia.)We’re making our way down to the Capitol Hill station platform. The pink and yellow artwork in the rafters is called ‘Jet Kiss’ – an art installation by Mike Ross, made from a pair of retired and cut up U.S. Navy A-4 Skyhawks. (It is hard to get a good angle to take a picture from. I will try again some other day!).Standing room only in the train. Once in the train, it’s just a 3 ½ minute ride up to the University of Washington station. The tunnel goes just under the Montlake cut, a shipping canal that links Lake Washington and Lake Union.The stations feature great tile work, which must have added to the construction cost. But I say : go for it. Make it look nice.This is the outside of the station at the University of Washington. The platform hereThis is the platform at the station at the University of Washington. The platform here can handle some 1,500 people – for those occasions when there is a football game at the stadium by the station.From the University of Washington Station, we went southbound back to Capitol Hill, and then stayed on the train to see the new section to the existing Westlake station. This is a new train car called ‘UW Station’ arriving at Westlake station, painted in a beautiful silver and purple.And here we have made it back full circle to Capitol Hill station, and we’re coming up the escalator to the ‘Walking Fingers’ artwork by local cartoonist Ellen Forney, professor at Cornish College of the Arts here in Seattle.
It’s March 17, and so it is St Patrick’s Day. St. Patrick was a 5th century missionary who is Ireland’s main patron saint. The absence of snakes in Ireland gave rise to the legend that they had all been banished by St. Patrick chasing them into the sea after they attacked him during a 40-day fast he was undertaking on top of a hill [I read this in the Wikipedia entry for St Patrick].
There was a little bit of history made in New York City as well, with an LGBT group allowed for the first time by parade organizers to march behind their own banner.
I like the little leprechaun and four-leaf clover the weather report featured this morning. And yay! .. Seattle has a few days of sun into Saturday, with day temperatures around 60°F/ 15°C.
Here’s a chart from a recent TIME magazine that shows how percentages of daily consumption much room there is for improvement in the American diet. (The breakdown is by calories, not by volume or mass). Yes, diets are very complicated ! .. but surely we should all try to eat much more veggies. And no, pizza and packaged foods do not count as vegetables!
We handed over our work on the gas utility implementation project to the support team on Friday. (There is a follow-up phase in the works). It’s been 18 months, my engagement there! In the mean time – back at the SAP ranch – there has been major new software upgrades and new product offerings of SAP’s business software. So I have a lot to catch up on. Can the old dog learn new tricks? Well, the dog should at least try.
SAP’s business software applications are moving to the cloud*, with a new interface that can be deployed across desktops as well as mobile devices. SAP has an enormous installed base of its business software around the world, and the company is working very hard to make it easier for businesses to migrate their data and applications that reside on-site, on their own infrastructure, into the cloud. The value proposition is that the cost of ownership will be lower, system upgrades will be quicker, cheaper and less painful, and the users will be happier with desktop or mobile ‘apps’ much more tailored to their requirements. And so SAP is encouraging its implementation partners and consultants to get up to speed, by offering training based on the principle of ‘Massive Open Online Courses’ (MOOC). Everything is on-line, and participants look at videos and do exercises, and submit assignments on-line.
*Cloud computing is a general term for several kinds of internet-based computing that provides shared processing resources and data to computers and other devices on demand (from Wikipedia).
There is even a free on-line course offered by SAP just for learning German .. aimed especially at the large number of asylum seekers that Germany is integrating into their society. Translation : ‘You can do it. German for asylum seekers. For volunteers.’
P.S. Donald Trump beat Marco Rubio in his home state of Florida by a wide margin, and Rubio dropped out as a result. John Kasich won in his home state of Ohio, keeping his hopes for the nomination alive (barely). The Republican race is now down to three : Trump, John Kasich and Ted Cruz. On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton won all five of her primaries over Bernie Sanders, albeit with slim margins in Missouri and in Illinois.
It’s Monday after a stormy weekend on the political scene as well. Donald Trump’s rally in Chicago on Friday night was cancelled after many protesters entered the arena where he was to speak, and as a result scuffles broke out. (No serious injuries, though). But Mr Trump did not denounce any of this .. in fact, he says he thinks it good for his campaign. And then in a new low of political opportunism (can it be anything else?), Ben Carson endorsed Trump this morning. Anyway : Super Tuesday No 3 is here tomorrow, with make-or-break primary elections for Messrs. Rubio and Kasich in their home states. If they don’t win there, they may very well have to pack it in and call it quits.
Trump and Clinton are the front-runners, and they are looking to extend their leads in tomorrow’s 2016 primary elections.The American primary system is extremely difficult to understand, and even more undemocratic.
We had a blustery and stormy Sunday afternoon here in the Seattle area. The strong winds uprooted trees and broke branches off from others. Several houses and cars were damaged, and tens of thousands of residents lost their electricity for a few hours. In Seward Park, a very large tree toppled over and hit an SUV, fatally injuring the driver.
We had a nice break in the rainy weather on Saturday, and I ran out to go buy new LED light bulbs for my kitchen. Not everyone has warned up to them : they require super-low wattage, but are also super-expensive ($15 per bulb). And some people say they still prefer the warm glow of Edison’s 110-year old incandescent bulbs .. to which I say : it’s 2016, people! Doesn’t saving energy and money (over the long haul) feel good as well?
Blue sky! .. and the trees are budding at Starbucks headquarters. The Stars and Stripes is at half-mast to pay respect to Nancy Reagan’s funeral that was on Friday.I came away with a cool Maps & Geography work book from Office Max (that is really intended for 3rd to 6th graders). It has line drawings of each State in, with just a bit of color and the State flower and bird, and other little interesting facts.
